Nigerian’s Federal Government has announced the payment of N35 Billion as salaries to 283,000 federal civil servants in the month of March, even as it with-held the salaries of over 1,000 others.
Those, whose salaries are being with-held are said to be yet to comply with the directive for the upgrade of their account to the ten digits Nigerian Uniform Bank Account Number
The Accountant General of the Federation, Jonah Otunla in Abuja at a workshop on the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System, advised staff to make sure that they have the NUBAN, which is the major challenge the office is facing in paying workers.
The CBN had released the guidelines on NUBAN scheme in August 2010 to achieve a uniform numbering structure among all Deposit Money Banks in Nigeria within nine months.
NUBAN, according to the CBN, has the potential to resolve problems with electronic payments in Nigeria as many of them are related to specification of wrong beneficiary account numbers.
The initial deadline was June 1, 2011. This was extended by the CBN to June 1, 2012; and at the expiration of the date, it was further extended to July 1, 2013.
The Office of the Accountant General of the Federation had last year stated that since NUBAN became fully operational on July 1, 2013, all members of staff of MDAs were supposed to have complied with it.
The Accountant General disclosed that that about 308 Ministries, Departments and Agencies were captured under the IPPIS platform.
The IPPIS is an innovation of the Federal Government that is meant to enhance planning and budgeting by making personnel cost to be based on actual verified figures and not estimates.
The AGF, who was represented by the Co-ordinator IPPIS, AGF office, Mrs. Fatima Mede said that the 283,000 staff that were paid salaries came from 308 Ministries, Departments and Agencies of the Federal Government “which we currently have on the system.
“We are hopeful that by June, we should have all federal MDAs in the country on the IPPIS netrwork.”
Otunla said also that his office had commenced work on getting all Federal Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of education and also Para-Military agencies on the IPPIS platform.
He said that the IPPIS would enable the government keep adequate tab of its recurrent expenditure.
